NEW IMPRESSION

The Louvre Abu Dhabi's latest post-impressionism exhibition adds Asian and Middle Eastern perspectives to the western canon and exemplifies the landmark's role as a global cultural connector

- By Zabrina Lo

The Louvre Abu Dhabi was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel; it features an iconic Parisian establishment in its name which, until 2047, will serve as museum partner; that museum and several other French institutes loan it artwork. So it comes as something of a surprise to learn that this seeming tribute to La République isn't just another outpost of a western institute.

Tatler visited the museum in mid-October. Its impressive 180-metre-wide dome, made up of stainless steel and aluminium layers, covers its galleries. Seen from afar, the structure, surrounded by water, evokes the image of an Arab medina, or historic quarter, floating on water. Inside, sunrays shine through the star-shaped gaps of the dome, casting a dappled pattern on the floor—an effect Nouvel calls the “rain of light”, and which pays tribute to the sheltering effect of the region's palm trees.

Every detail points to the museum being a point of confluence between the United Arab Emirates and the rest of the world, and an “oasis” of knowledge.

This identity is also reflected in the museum's exhibitions. Its latest, Post-Impressionism: Beyond Appearances, which opened in October and runs until February 9, 2025, injects a new, global perspective to what are usually Eurocentric curation of the period. Hosted in collaboration with the Musée d'Orsay and art consultancy France Muséums, with works borrowed also from nine museums and cultural institutions around the world, the show features more than 100 artworks by key figures of post-impressionism, a predominantly French art movement that developed between roughly 1886 and 1905, when artists moved the traditional role of paintings from being a window to the world to reflecting their own mind and soul.